[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#607244: octave3.2: octave crashed with "panic: Illegal instruction -- stopping myself..."

[Raman Venkataramani]

Package: octave3.2
Version: 3.2.4-8
Severity: normal

I'm running octave 3.2.4 on a powerbook G4. certain linear algebra function
calls crash octave. For example:

octave:1> A=[1 2; 2 20]
A =

    1    2
    2   20

octave:2> inv(A)
panic: Illegal instruction -- stopping myself...
attempting to save variables to `octave-core'...
save to `octave-core' complete
Illegal instruction

My cpuinfo file:
raman at powermint:~/Simulator$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
cpu             : 7455, altivec supported
clock           : 867.000000MHz
revision        : 3.2 (pvr 8001 0302)
bogomips        : 86.64
timebase        : 33330805
platform        : PowerMac
model           : PowerBook3,5
machine         : PowerBook3,5
motherboard     : PowerBook3,5 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh
detected as     : 80 (PowerBook Titanium IV)
pmac flags      : 0000001b
L2 cache        : 256K unified
pmac-generation : NewWorld
Memory          : 1024 MB



-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-powerpc
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages octave3.2 depends on:
ii  libamd2.2.0         1:3.4.0-2            approximate minimum degree orderin
ii  libarpack2          2.1+parpack96.dfsg-3 Fortran77 subroutines to solve lar
ii  libatlas3gf-base [l 3.8.3-27             Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra
ii  libblas3gf [libblas 1.2-8                Basic Linear Algebra Reference imp
ii  libbz2-1.0          1.0.5-6              high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6               2.11.2-7             Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcamd2.2.0        1:3.4.0-2            symmetric approximate minimum degr
ii  libccolamd2.7.1     1:3.4.0-2            constrained column approximate lib
ii  libcholmod1.7.1     1:3.4.0-2            sparse Cholesky factorization libr
ii  libcolamd2.7.1      1:3.4.0-2            column approximate minimum degree 
ii  libcurl3-gnutls     7.21.0-1             Multi-protocol file transfer libra
ii  libcxsparse2.2.3    1:3.4.0-2            concise sparse matrix library (com
ii  libfftw3-3          3.2.2-1              library for computing Fast Fourier
ii  libfltk1.1          1.1.10-2+b1          Fast Light Toolkit - shared librar
ii  libfreetype6        2.4.2-2.1            FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libftgl2            2.1.3~rc5-3          library to render text in OpenGL u
ii  libgcc1             1:4.4.5-8            GCC support library
ii  libgfortran3        4.4.5-8              Runtime library for GNU Fortran ap
ii  libgl1-mesa-glx [li 7.7.1-4              A free implementation of the OpenG
ii  libglpk0            4.43-1               linear programming kit with intege
ii  libglu1-mesa [libgl 7.7.1-4              The OpenGL utility library (GLU)
ii  libgomp1            4.4.5-8              GCC OpenMP (GOMP) support library
ii  libgraphicsmagick++ 1.3.12-1+b1          format-independent image processin
ii  libgraphicsmagick3  1.3.12-1+b1          format-independent image processin
ii  libhdf5-serial-1.8. 1.8.4-patch1-2       Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) 
ii  libice6             2:1.0.6-2            X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libjasper1          1.900.1-7+b1         The JasPer JPEG-2000 runtime libra
ii  libjpeg62           6b1-1                The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG 
ii  liblapack3gf [libla 3.2.1-8              library of linear algebra routines
ii  liblcms1            1.18.dfsg-1.2+b3     Color management library
ii  libltdl7            2.2.6b-2             A system independent dlopen wrappe
ii  libncurses5         5.7+20100313-4       shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libpcre3            8.02-1.1             Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expressi
ii  libpng12-0          1.2.44-1             PNG library - runtime
ii  libqhull5           2009.1-1             calculate convex hulls and related
ii  libqrupdate1        1.0.1-1              Fast updates of QR and Cholesky de
ii  libreadline6        6.1-3                GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libsm6              2:1.1.1-1            X11 Session Management library
ii  libstdc++6          4.4.5-8              The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libtiff4            3.9.4-5              Tag Image File Format (TIFF) libra
ii  libumfpack5.4.0     1:3.4.0-2            sparse LU factorization library
ii  libwmf0.2-7         0.2.8.4-6.1+b1       Windows metafile conversion librar
ii  libx11-6            2:1.3.3-4            X11 client-side library
ii  libxext6            2:1.1.2-1            X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxml2             2.7.8.dfsg-1         GNOME XML library
ii  octave3.2-common    3.2.4-8              architecture-independent files for
ii  texinfo             4.13a.dfsg.1-6       Documentation system for on-line i
ii  zlib1g              1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3     compression library - runtime

Versions of packages octave3.2 recommends:
ii  gnuplot                       4.4.0-1.1  A command-line driven interactive 
ii  libatlas3gf-base              3.8.3-27   Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra

Versions of packages octave3.2 suggests:
pn  octave3.2-doc                 <none>     (no description available)
ii  octave3.2-emacsen             3.2.4-8    Emacs support for the GNU Octave l
ii  octave3.2-headers             3.2.4-8    header files for the GNU Octave la
pn  octave3.2-htmldoc             <none>     (no description available)
pn  octave3.2-info                <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information